Seeking Your Feedback on a Beat Our Board Design Challenge - Grand Prize $5,000

I do not think it is project outsorcing, but showing that it is impossible to beat board is very crazy marketing campaign, so in my opinion it is more like converting marketing effort to enginnering effort which is interesting.

I think this approach may work with different kind of board where the several upgrades are possible. For example imagine upgrading Arduino competition. You have plenty of options like adding onboard debugger, sensor, some different connector, power consumption monitor, changing chips, .... But in case of purely analog and power evaluation boards it is quite hard because there are very limited options how to make it better.

misaz said:

I do not understand the point "Cannot use InnoSwitch".

Its because,they saying efficiency is due to their Innoswitch.

Additionaly there is high voltage nature of the project and related safety and legal issues. For example, in my country, it is prohibited to work with live parts with voltage higher than 25VAC or 60VDC without qualification which this competition limit to professionals only.

In my opinion it is not. Efficience does not depend only on switch, but transformer also caouses losses, even wires causes loses. All these (and much more) are of course highly optimized on this board. InnoSwitch is only one part of solution and just using InnoSwitch does not garantue 93% efficiency automagicaly.

This is for their TOPswitch design claim, similar they would have somewhere for Innoswitch.

If they really want beatup board participant, they have to increase sponsor money like in PCB and pay minimum livelihood expenses to people like me or whoever needs it.

Because this is real challenge to beat company's board. And it needs lot calculations first.  I have my own modified topology but not yet tried in simulation.

This is an intriguing challenge. Designing a power supply is not an impossible task, especially since a working schematic is provided. For sure it will be tough to beat the performance of the reference design, but that is an objective to strive for, not a requirement in order to win. You are not competing with the manufacturer's design, you are competing against other contestants.

You could or would essentially clone the reference design, except substituting other GaN devices and try little tricks to improve efficiency, like heavier copper. 

Given that there is a free shopping cart to buy components, it would seem to be a good, low-cost, opportunity to try your hand at a power supply design challenge.

I am kicking the idea around a bit, but so far not too keen on spending 6 months on this. I think I have a 2 KW 150V supply in storage, but I can't get near 500V. My normal bench supply only goes to 60V and it can only supply 2A.

Like Michael, it has been a long while since I did heavy duty automotive compliant design.

I have mixed feelings about this type of challenge.

Some companies prohibit their employees from using their talents in this type of event as they might unwittingly reveal company trade secrets.

This is not a trivial challenge, to succeed you will have to have some very good engineering skills and access to some sophisticated test equipment.

There is also the issue of intellectual property.

If someone comes up with a better design, will the sponsor own the rights to manufacture the solution or variants using ideas from the challenge?

Yes, you could win $5,000 , but you could miss out on potentially high value royalties from the sale of the product.

Even if I had the skills, I would not enter this type of challenge without first consulting a lawyer on my IP rights.

If I m successful, in my personal case, I am willing to sell my copyright , my patent and IP for USD 5000, provided, they pay minimum livelihood expense per month and agree on my design approach (in my case only).

I had even willed to sell my personal papers which are revealed but as no proper buyer was there, I uploaded (also for reviewers it was not easy to evaluate).

IP issue wont come as it is impossible only what company looking, and probably no one could win as it requires proper engineering in-depth knowledge.

Yes only 1 or 2 might get successful, it is extremely hard to cross what company looking.  Company and Industry (as such) would be happy to meet such persons.

I have different design approach, for me it is not to get on the bench instantly but rather if any local company would ask me to do so, I will ask 20 days calculations time on papers with 100 -200 pages(blank papers), then simulation time of 2-3 months, then 2-3 different PCB variants.

So, I do need minimum livelihood expenses.